English

Decorrelation transition in the Wigner minor process

Probability 2025-09-16 v4 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We consider the Wigner minor process, i.e. the eigenvalues of an N×NN\times N Wigner matrix H(N)H^{(N)} together with the eigenvalues of all its n×nn\times n minors, H(n)H^{(n)}, nNn\le N. The top eigenvalues of H(N)H^{(N)} and those of its immediate minor H(N1)H^{(N-1)} are very strongly correlated, but this correlation becomes weaker for smaller minors H(Nk)H^{(N-k)} as kk increases. For the GUE minor process the critical transition regime around kN2/3k\sim N^{2/3} was analyzed by Forrester and Nagao (J. Stat. Mech.: Theory and Experiment, 2011) providing an explicit formula for the nontrivial joint correlation function. We prove that this formula is universal, i.e. it holds for the Wigner minor process. Moreover, we give a complete analysis of the sub- and supercritical regimes both for eigenvalues and for the corresponding eigenvector overlaps, thus we prove the decorrelation transition in full generality.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.06549,
  title  = {Decorrelation transition in the Wigner minor process},
  author = {Zhigang Bao and Giorgio Cipolloni and László Erdős and Joscha Henheik and Oleksii Kolupaiev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.06549},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

33 pages, 3 figures; v1->v2->v3->v4: minor updates

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:12:45.858Z